Comment by 93po
7 days ago
It was never going to last if the US allowed for very low cost imports from those countries. This is literally one of the largest points of tariffs - protecting domestic manufacturing. We could have had high tariffs the whole time and offshoring would have been much less pronounced. I'm not saying that would have been a net positive, but to say it would never last is only true under certain circumstances.
You were still going to lose export markets as international competition grew, and you were still going to shift to higher value-added service jobs as the economy developed.